President-elect Donald Trump has laid out a US military policy that would avoid unnecessary interventions in foreign conflicts and instead focus heavily on defeating the Islamic State militancy.

• Donald Trump says US must stop trying to topple foreign regimes
• The President-elect says he wants to boost military spending
• Barack Obama makes his final national security address

In the latest stop on a "thank you" tour of states critical to his November 8 election win, Mr Trump introduced his choice for defence secretary, General James Mattis, to a large crowd in Fayetteville near the Fort Bragg military base, which has deployed soldiers to 90 countries around the world.

"We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with," Mr Trump said.

read more: 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-07/trump-lays-out-non-interventionist...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/picture/2016/dec/07/st...

trumpology

There was no unpredictability about Time’s choice for its person of the year. Just as in 1214 it had to be Genghis Khan and in 1462 Time could not fail to recognize Vlad the Impaler’s impact – the screaming bodies he left on stakes across Transylvania were a tribute to his determination and foreign policy strength – this year it had no choice but to put the president-elect of the United States on its cover.

He looks the part. Photographed inside Trump Tower by Nadav Kander, the most powerful man in the world radiates the grandeur of destiny. Turning to look at us from his expensive and ornate, indeed monarchical, chair, he wants it to be seen that he means business. He is not smiling. He is not joking. He is not even tweeting.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/08/time-magazine-trum...

And so goes Johnathan Jones at the Guardian's rubbish tip. Whether one likes or dislikes Trump is not the question. As far as we know, Trump has not killed, murdered or tortured anyone — unlike the George Bushes (both), the Clintons (both) and Obama's ensuite of drones and useless wars in which thousands of people got killed and about 5 million people displaced — to please thier friends the Saudis. So If you want to compare Genghis Khan to someone please do it with any of the above mentioned names.

As for the rest, NO-ONE has any idea of what Trump will do, NOT EVEN TRUMP HIMSELF, apart from loading his mob with ignormuses. And by the way, I have a pair of similar chairs in my ballroom and I am not a monachirst...

United States President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Australian Andrew Liveris, chairman and chief of Dow Chemical, to head the American Manufacturing Council — a private sector group that advises the US secretary of commerce.

Mr Trump made the announcement during a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he introduced the 62-year-old dual US-Australian citizen as "one of the foremost leaders in manufacturing, one of the foremost leaders in the world of business".

"[He's] one of the most respected businessman in the world and I'm asking him to come up and head up our American Manufacturing Council — and he's agreed to do it," Mr Trump said.

"They will be tasked with finding ways to bring industry back to America."

Mr Liveris was born in Darwin to a Greek migrant family and studied chemical engineering at Brisbane's University of Queensland, from where he later also received an honorary doctorate.

He has previously been critical of Australian businesses' "ability to innovate and develop the things that the United States has".

"Australia, my wonderful home country, the lucky country, the well-written about happiest country in the world, of course has complacency as its greatest enemy," he said earlier this year.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-10/trump-appoints-dow-chemical-chief-...

Even so, and even though Trump was clearly the biggest news story of 2016, he still should not have won. For there is another figure who looms larger over this annus horribilis, albeit from the shadows. He ends this year with a wolfish grin, content that almost all his dreams have come true. That man is Vladimir Putin.

He surveys the global landscape and sees almost every sign pointing his way. From Aleppo to the White House, from post-truth to Brexit, this is the year the world was reshaped in his image. He may not have been the guiding hand behind every shift, though he certainly gave several of them a nudge, but together they made him 2016’s biggest winner.

Start with Syria, which even in this year of horrors surely merits a special infamy of its own. The leaders of western nations ritually condemn the catastrophe that has been visited upon the people of Aleppo, eloquently denouncing the bombing of hospitals, including makeshift clinics hidden in basements, the flattening of civilian areas, the killing of children, the denial of food and medicine. And yet Putin knows he need not listen. Because the important fact is the one on the ground: no one has stopped him or his Syrian vassal, Bashar al-Assad, from continuing the slaughter.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/09/person-of-the-year...

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Excuse me... Did I miss something? Has the USA nothing to do with supporting the rebels in Syria? Are the rebels in Syria all clothed with angel wings?

Jonathan Freedland who wrote the piece above is keen on whitewashing the role of the west in the Middle East wars. It's  only because we "support" one side of the conflict that we can heap the blame on the other side. In this regard we have to come to term with our own sin — if I can call this our involvement in this shit.  The fighting could stop tomorrow should the "rebels" — mostly terrorists of the worse kind — waved the white flag and surrender. But oh no, Obama has promised more arms to the rebels, which include Al Nusra, Al Qaeda (remember 9/11) and even ISIS by default since a lot of the new US weapons will end up adding to the ISIS arsenal. So it's all to do with "Assad" because he is refusing to let Wahhabi Salafist Sunnis rule Syria under sharia law and is also stopping the Saudi gas pipeline going through Syria — and this is where most of the problem stem from.Assad did not want to play ball with the US oils and gas juggernaut...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/14/with-trump-and-til...

President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy will bring together the two most important trends sweeping world politics. One is the surge of anti-establishment consciousness across the west. Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Washington outsider and friend of Russia, Rex Tillerson, is the latest manifestation of this. The other is the rise of Asia after half a millennium of relative stagnation.

For Australia, this is an opportunity for an overdue recalibration of our foreign policy thinking, one that harnesses the benefits of our diverse population and puts people first.

Electors around the country are being harassed with a barrage of emails, phone calls and letters — and even death threats — in an effort to block Donald Trump from being voted in as president by the Electoral College on Monday.

The bullying is overwhelming Sharon Geise’s tech devices, but not her resolve to support Trump.

The Mesa, Arizona, grandmother woke up Wednesday morning to more than 1,500 emails demanding she not carry out her legal duty to vote for the president-elect.

“They just keep coming and coming,” Geise told The Post, estimating she’s received more than 50,000 emails since the election. “They’re overpowering my iPad.”

Her answer: mass delete.

Despite the avalanche, she said, her decision to back Trump is stronger than ever.

“Obviously their minds are made up and they’re not going to change. I’m not either,” the soft-spoken Geise said.

read more:

http://nypost.com/2016/12/14/electors-are-being-harassed-threatened-in-b...

Amid protests across the country, members of the Electoral College on Monday formally confirmed Donald Trump as the next president of the United States.

By early Monday evening, the president-elect clinched the 270 electoral votes required to officially win the White House. Hillary Clinton trailed far behind, with 166 votes, including 29 from New York.

“With this historic step we can look forward to the bright future ahead. I will work hard to unite our country and be the President of all Americans. Together, we will make America great again,” Trump said in a statement.

One “faithless elector” in Maine voted for Bernie Sanders instead of Clinton, but his vote was ruled improper and he had to vote for Clinton instead.

“I cast my Electoral College vote for Bernie Sanders today to let those new voters who were inspired by him know that some of us did hear them, did listen to them, do respect them and understand their disappointment,” Maine elector David Bright wrote in a statement on Facebook.

Another elector in Minnesota, Muhammad Abdurrahman, also refused to vote for Clinton, and was replaced by an alternate. A third elector in Colorado, Michael Baca, also declined to vote for Clinton, and was replaced.

read more:

http://nypost.com/2016/12/19/trump-surpasses-270-electoral-college-votes/

President Obama claims he would have handily trounced Donald Trump if only the Constitution had let him seek a third term.

“I am confident in [my progressive] vision because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could have mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama told his former top adviser David Axelrod on Axelrod’s podcast, “The Axe Files.”

“I know that in conversations that I’ve had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say, ‘The vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one,’ ” the lame-duck president said.

But Trump had a different take.

“President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! — jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.,” he tweeted Monday afternoon.

And Obama took a shot at Hillary Clinton for failing to concentrate on grass-roots efforts to connect with voters who were alienated from Beltway politics.

read more:

http://nypost.com/2016/12/26/trump-on-obama-third-term-no-way/

Most likely Bernie would have won over trump.

In dark, smoke-choked rooms across the vast expanse of 11 time-zones that is Putin's Russia are brooding Dostoyevskian characters consumed with one overriding objective: Hacking Hillary Clinton’s email server in a brazen attempt to strike at US democracy and deliver Russia-friendly demagogue Donald J. Trump to power. Yes, Clinton made the task easier by using her home computer to send classified messages, but this should not lessen our appreciation for these provocateurs.

It has been a long and thankless road for the Russian hacker. Whenever he is mentioned, it is in the hushed tones of secret sources behind the closed doors of some windowless government agency, and reported in media of dubious repute. But Russians have to take their fame and notoriety where they can get it these days.

"It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to... get Trump elected," an anonymous US official briefed by another anonymous official told the Washington Post. "That's the consensus view."

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/371729-person-year-2016-russian-hackers/

• By George F. Will

Oh oh oh.... Ah ah ah... I still can't believe that "journalists" or say their "editors" write these stupid headlines... As if... The Donald and his team knew that HILLARY WAS NOT PAYING ATTENTION to the electoral college... Donald may be mad but he's more devious than you give him no credit for.

See: 

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